Missing Data
by Kate Swynford
Summary: Five things that never happened to John Anderton.


MISSING DATA

Five Things That Never Happened to John Anderton

HALO

"This is the end," he thinks as they halo him. But it is not.

He wakes up from the dreams (dreams?), shaking, gasping, his heart hammering. He feels like a fish, snatched out of water. The world is blurred and distant. He doesn't know where he is, who, with who or when. He can barely think, let alone speak. Is this real? Is this now?

Wait, this is something he dimly remembers. He blinks, gasps again and whispers: "Agatha?"

And then there is the voice, so achingly familiar and full of love, that he wants to cry. The voice says:

"It's Lara, John. Wake up."

He knows that she has come to save him. He doesn't quite understand how and quickly pushes back the thought. She is here. He will be free. Everything will be all right. This is what matters. He smiles. Because it is as they say, and the dreams of the halo'd do come true.

HOUSE BY THE LAKE

"Sean? Sean? Have you seen a little boy in red shorts?" Rising panic in his voice, eyes frantically searching the crowd. "Sean?!" he is desperate now. Desperate, and frozen with terror. "SEAN?"

"Over here, Daddy!"

His son is a few feet away from him, at the ice-cream stand. John rushes to him and holds him tight. He doesn't realize how lucky they are until later that night local news report that a little boy of Sean's age went missing in the pool that day. He doesn't want to think about it. For a long time John and Lara don't let their boy out of their sight, but gradually the fear fades. Everything does.

Sean goes to school and takes up running. He is a good kid, and his parents are proud of him. He doesn't have many friends because he is wary of strangers, but the few friends he makes, he keeps. He doesn't like swimming and never goes to the pool anymore. So he can't match his Daddy's record of holding breath underwater, but he will run as fast as his Dad. And he trains even harder.

They move to their house by the lake and give up the apartment in Washington, because, really, a city is no place for raising kids. Sean has a little sister now. He also has a dog, a rabbit and a fox. He wants to be a vet.

Sometimes John takes his son to D.C. On Sean's twelfth birthday they take a tour of the Pre-Crime Headquarters. Sean is fascinated by what he sees. His father - not so much, because secretly he prefers old-fashioned policework.

Sean grows up and enrolls into Police Academy. He falls in love with a med student named Claire. He is twenty three. He proposes to her at Christmas. Two years later they get married.

Sean is twenty-eight when he starts working at Pre-Crime. He is a good precop, and is well liked by his fellow officers, by Captain Witwer and even by the old recluse Lamar Burgess, who is rumored to still have everything under control.

Sean Anderton is thirty-two years old, when he wanders into the Temple. He never feels comfortable there, near this big pool, especially when Wally is out. Suddenly the female Precog grabs his arm and asks him breathlessly, "Can you see?"

FADE TO BLACK

"Daddy!"

Sean is running to him.

"Daddy! Look what I've got!"

He can hardly see his son because of the tears. He reaches out to touch him even though he knows it is futile. Six years worth of images is all he has now. Images of his boy laughing, running, playing. Images of the boy who is lost forever.

For Lara the sandal the FBI found means that Sean is alive somewhere. For her it is like a sign, the first trace they have had in many months. Anderton knows better. He has seen it too many times before in his line of work. But even his pain and guilt are not so unbearable as the pictures his imagination keeps conjuring. Every time he looks through the files they carefully stored up for family history - birthdays, picnics, games - he keeps seeing other things, horrifying, excruciating. Things that drive him crazy. Things that cannot be obliterated. Things that make him want to go out and kill somebody.

And when he takes out his gun, his hands don't tremble and the bullet doesn't go through the ceiling. It hits home.

THE GIRL

"Can you see?" she asks.

"See what?" he snaps. What he can see right now is a gaunt, flat-chested girl with lanky hair who he has already mentally labeled "Fish-Eyes". She is pale, plain and almost painfully thin, this Agatha Not-So-Lively. Her bulging eyes stare somewhere past him so intensely that he is almost tempted to look over his shoulder even though he knows there's just a blank white wall behind him. He can't tell her age. She could be anything from fifteen to forty. Weird creature. Probably a neuroin addict, too (not that he is one to judge her). "See what?" he asks, more mildly this time.

"You can't, but I can," she persists. "I can see."

This reminds him of an old movie he saw a long time ago. A movie about a kid who could see dead people. The kid looked a bit like Sean (don't think of that) and this is why he remembers it.

"I see things, so many, too many," she continues. "But it's not enough. It never is. I need you to help me."

Oh that's rich. He can't help laughing. How can he help anybody when he hasn't been able to help himself (or his son? Or his wife? But no, she never needed his help.) he is forty but feels as old as hills. An addict kicked off from the police force (thanks to the bloody gum-chewing kid whose name he can't remember), barely making enough to feed his addiction. A private eye in the kingdom of the blind.

She finally turns her gaze on him. She looks at him with those fish-eyes of hers, lips pursed, hands folded in her lap. She looks at him and knows because her curse/gift is not only seeing murders whatever Dr Hineman might think. It was this gift or curse that told her to find this man, and it had never been wrong before. She is sure of that. She keeps track. Let him laugh.

He doesn't laugh for long though. This X-ray stare is unnerving him. He suddenly feels uncomfortable and for the first time wonders why the hell she has chosen him. "What do you want from me?" he asks.

And she tells him. She tells him about her nightmares. She tells him of murder and death and blood. She tells him about Dr Hineman and her experiments. And when she says that he will help her, he knows he will. But it takes him many months to ask if she has ever had a nightmare about a little boy in red shorts who disappeared from a public pool twelve years ago.

RED BALL

He still can't get his mind around that one. He knows he has been framed. But how? Why? By who? The how is a paradox. When did this thing start? With someone approaching Leo Crow, promising to pay him if he pretends he killed Sean? Could a mere intention trigger the chain of events that brought him here? And if it could then it certainly wasn't Danny Witwer who set him up. He doubts the little shit could come up with a plan like that. No, it had to be someone who was intimately familiar with the inner workings of Pre-Crime. Someone like himself. Or-

He glances at Agatha, huddled in the front seat beside him. She is silent, practically catatonic. What shall he do with her? At some point the idea of returning her to the Temple started to feel wrong. He thinks Wally's devotion to her is somewhat disturbing. And keeping someone pumped full of drugs, between sleep and wakefulness, just so you could access the information they have is not OK. It completely slips his mind that less than two hours ago all he wanted was to use her head as a file: open/read/copy/close. Hell, in these clothes she looks practically human. Ridiculous - yes, crazy - yes, sick - yes, but still a person. He will never be able to forget her screaming, or her pleading, or the way she gripped his arm trying to stop him.

She grips his arm now, and he is so startled that he nearly lets go of the wheel. What the fk?

"We have to hurry," she says. "Drive."

"What?"

"Just drive. I'll show you the way".

He is about to protest but changes his mind. His only option is to go to Lara's but maybe it would be better not to involve her. (Though he would like to see her one last time before they finally catch him.) Maybe it would be better to do as Agatha says. After all, she has never been wrong before. Or has she? This leads him to thinking about the minority reports again. And then he understands that only one person in the world could set him up. It just hits him, and his hands clench around the wheel. The pain of this betrayal is nothing compared to losing Sean, but it's new, it's fresh and it hurts. He is almost surprised at this. He thought nothing could hurt him anymore. The only thing he doesn't get is the reason. Why? It doesn't make any sense. He is thinking about it and following Agatha's instructions mechanically, so it is only when she tells him to stop the car that he understands they have come to his own apartment.

"Hurry!" she tells him. "There is no time."

"What? What is it?" he asks.

"Murder," she shrieks.

But he doesn't hear the spyders, or the voices and footsteps on the staircase. There is no hovercraft at the window. In fact, there is nothing at all. And he realizes why and knows it's his own fault. He took Agatha, and made it all happen. Is he supposed to kill someone here? Or stop someone being killed? Agatha gives him a push and he crashes through the door.

Danny Witwer is staring at him with wide frightened eyes. Lamar slowly turns to see what the noise is. He has John's gun in his hand.

"This is the end," Anderton thinks. But it's not. 


End file.
